The present invention relates to a digital content distribution system to distribute contents, and in particular, to a technology efficiently applicable to a digital content distribution system in which an original document such as a book is digitized into a digital content and the content digitized is distributed from a content database center to stores such that a digital content selected by a customer is sold in the stores.
Thanks to the spread of the Internet, electronic commerce has been developed and hence attention has been attracted to sales of a digital content which can be sold and delivered through a network. Additionally, it has been expected that the contents of information (such as novels, comics, music, and games) which have been sold as articles or package media through existing distribution routes are digitized and are distributed and sold through networks.
In accordance with the background art to sell the digitized content, there has been actually developed business, for example, mail-order selling of various contents and download of a digital content itself via a network at an electronic mall site of the Internet, a service of a terminal at a store such as a convenience store to copy a content desired by a customer from a storage media onto a supply media, and a service to deliver information using a telephone service number.
JP-A-10-254850 describes an information system and an information generating method for use with the system which distributes information generated or edited using information items dispersed in a network. In the system, new information is generated using information items dispersed in the network and is distributed via the network. This facilitates editing of information such as generation and modification thereof according to processing conditions such as an audiovisual environment and a generation environment of information.
Distribution and sales using paper as media play at present a central role in the distribution and sales of contents. In the distribution via such paper media, a print format of the contents on sheets of paper and a bundling form of the sheets influence a way of distribution and an audiovisual way, which forms the present culture. There is consequently needed a digital content distribution system in which the way of distribution and the audiovisual way are preserved and the culture accumulated is inherited and the contents using the paper media are digitized into digital contents to change the existing system to a system in which the contents are distributed and sold via a network. The digital content distribution system thereby solves distribution problems of the existing distribution media such as the environmental problems, the problem of the latest one of the contents, the problem of the returning and discarding of goods, and the problem of distribution cost.
In the background art to sell a digital content, although the selling of the digital content itself is carried out, the content is not distributed in the form of digital data entirely through the digital content distribution system. This leads to a problem that a digital content generated through the digitization cannot be immediately distributed to a store to be sold to a customer.
That is, in the background art to sell a digital content, an ordinary distribution such as delivery of a compact disk read-only memory (CD-ROM) in which a digital content is stored appears at an intermediate point of the digital content distribution system. Consequently, there exists a problem that a period of several days is required for the delivery of a digital content of a new item and the delivery of a digital content ordered by a customer.
When a digital content is sold via a network, the digital content is beforehand copied onto a recording media. However, in the background art above, there has not been clearly established a system in which the license fee of the digital content is collected according to the number of copies to pay the collected amount to the content holder. This consequently leads to a problem of possibility that the license fee is not paid to the content holder according to the number of copies sold.
For the content already distributed, the configuration itself in which the user listens to or views the content is an important point. Namely, since items distributed in the form of publications have a style of books, there has already been established a method to find out books, and the readers have a manner to read a book in a page-by-page fashion by turning over pages.
However, in the related art to sell a digital content, since the digitization is not achieved to reproduce with possible fidelity to the configurations such as the appearance of articles of publications and CDs actually distributed, the appearance of the original book of the content considerably varies from that of the digital content attained by digitizing the original book in some cases. This leads to a problem of difficulty in the handling of the digital content in the same way as for the actual item. For example, when only text data of a book is inputted to generate an electronic book, since information of appearance of the book such as a cover and a backbone of the book is lost, it is difficult to search for the electronic book including only the text data in a way similar to that used to search for a book which a customer just happened to see in an advertisement or to search for a well-known book in a store by visually checking its cover and backbone.